Thank You
by Kaelan
Summary: When House tries to assemble back his team, he's faced with terrible news. News that will take him across the world. AU from beginning of season 8.
1. Chapter 1

His plan had gone almost perfectly well. One patient and a couple of dirty tricks had landed him the money to hire back his team, and he could even be picky and choose whoever he wanted.

He'd started with Thirteen, but a phone call and two different visits later it became clear she was not budging, and House had the feeling that no amount of games or persuasion was gonna work this time. Taub had been easier. He had agreed almost immediately, even though it meant taking a pay cut from his surgery job with two new baby daughters to sustain, as well as two angry moms to deal with. So that left him with only Chase to convince, and he expected no resistance there.

"Did Chase change phone numbers?" he asked Foreman, when regular attempts to establish contact had failed.

"What?" Foreman said, digging his way out from a mountain of paperwork. The question had caught him off guard, and he was suddenly nervous.

"Chase. I want to hire him back. Taub said he took a surfing vacation or something. Do you have his contact info?"

"His contact..." Foreman hesitated, his expression turning somber.

"What?" House said, sensing his uneasiness. "Where is he?"

"I thought Wilson would have told you..." he answered, not making eye contact. House closed the distance between them and laid his cane on Foreman's desk. A list of bizarre possibilities started running through his head, and with a sudden jolt of pain from his leg he dropped all trace of mockery.

"Wilson didn't even visited me in prison! Tell me what? Is he dead or what?"

Foreman paused, and House's blood chilled. _No way, someone would have told him if he was dead_.

"He's..." Foreman started

"He's what? Spit it out!"

"He's missing. No one's seen him or heard anything about him for a month."

House breathed a little easier. God, was Foreman making it difficult. He briefly considered that he was getting played, but no, Foreman's face looked way too serious for that. But still, there was something he didn't know yet. He'd been missing for four months and no one had been the wiser, and he doubted Foreman had been this worried.

"A month? That's not really much is it? And missing where? Have you contacted his surfing buddies? He could be in a beach somewhere in Indonesia where there's no signal-"

"House, he's not in Indonesia…" Foreman cut him off, but he brushed off his comment. What would Foreman know about surfing anyways?

"How would you know? You haven't enjoyed yourself since you were a kid, you probably-"

"House!" he interrupted again, and something about the tone of his voice told House he was not to be taken lightly. "House, he was not surfing when he went missing. He was doing outreach work with the International Committee of the Red Cross, in the Amazon rainforest."

House paused for a second.

"Wait, what? Outreach work? What, like Doctors without borders? Are you kidding me, Chase would never…"

"He was surfing in the area but he got injured, and a team from the UK convinced him to do it. It was a three month temporary field position in a very remote location. He would send emails weekly until last month." he said in a monotone voice, like he had repeated those exact words time and time again.

"So… so he lost internet access, that's not unheard of" he said, but Foreman shook his head sadly.

"I've been in contact with the Red Cross. They had a big storm and lost track of the entire team. Two doctors, a paramedic, a midwife and a volunteer are missing. They sent me this." He said, then clicked on a couple of files in his computer. After a moment of silence, a familiar voice ran though the laptop's speakers, wrapped in unfamiliar background sounds

 _"_ _This is Dr. Robert Chase with squad R34, um, just letting you guys know, the pick-up hasn't arrived yet. Rain is pretty heavy and we're at flooding risk so please send another team soon, we need to get out of here ASAP."_

"When was that message sent?" House asked once it was over.

"Three weeks ago. The car that was sent to pick them up was found a week later on the rivers' edge, a landslide had collapsed a part of that road. They have found two of the nurses that worked with them in a village nearby, but they said they got separated. They have no idea where they are."

"Jesus! Why am I just hearing about this now?"

"House, I'm sorry, I thought you knew already. We've tried keeping it quiet for the moment since its such a delicate matter."

"Does Cameron know?"

"No."

"And no one's telling her about her dearest ex better half?"

Foreman paused. He had debated telling Cameron, but he knew Chase rarely talked to her, and he'd recently found out she had remarried and was pregnant. In the end, he figured leaving her in the dark would be the best for her.

"Don't tell her. Not until we know more."

House laughed. A wicked, scary laugh that made Foreman shift in his seat.

"Until we know more? What if we never know more, have you thought about that? What if six months pass with no news, will you tell her then? A year? Oh yeah, nice to see you, Cameron, oh, Chase, no, I haven't seen him since he disappeared a year ago in the fucking jungle!"

"Oh come on! What would you have me do?"

"Don't be such a coward and step up!"

"House, the woman's about to give birth, I'm holding out for some news. If there's not any in a month I'll tell her." he said, and House stepped back. Suddenly he could not remember what had brought him to the office in the first place. He had Foreman send him Chase's phone recording and the details of the Red Cross Office in Lima, but knew there wasn't really much he could do. Like Foreman said, all they had to do was wait.

 **Thanks for reading! This story is pretty much finished, I'm just editing. It will be around 9 chaps. Please let me know what you think!**


	2. Chapter 2

He could tell when it finally stopped raining from the smell. The sun was out and the mud starting to dry filled the air with the not unpleasant aroma of fresh clay. Eventually, the fever went down enough that he could sit up on the bed and look out the mosquito net windows of the cabin. Outside, the fog was gone and the sky was an endless blue.

He was on his third cycle, and he knew he had to hold on to the few moments of clarity he had. In the afternoon the fever would come again, full force, and he would be incapable of anything, if the last cycle had been any indication. Even now, on his down time, he still felt worse than he did on the last one, and his fever, though down to manageable levels, was anything but gone.

On his sides, the other patients on the remote town clinic were starting to wake and shift around, but moving his head hurt too much and he could only see them out of the corner of his vision. When he was first brought in, he could tell when someone was coming by the sound of their footsteps on the wooden floor, but after the third cycle he'd woke up to find a feeling of fullness in his ears, and everything had been quiet from then on. That was when he knew that things were taking a turn for the worse.

He'd written down his name and the Red Cross phone number for the nurse-he was the only doctor in that clinic- but so far he hadn't heard back, since there was only one phone in the entire village, and it wasn't always available. When the fever came again, full force, he would either go into respiratory arrest, seizures or coma, he predicted, and his moments of clarity would become further and further between, until the quinine either started helping him or he died. There was no mystery diagnosis here, and having the progression of his disease be so predictable put him at an odd ease. He knew what to expect.

When he'd first arrived at the village, he'd been relieved. For more than two weeks he'd been held against his will in the miner's camp, barely eating and always afraid, but here in the village he was free. He had food, he had a bed. I'll be home in no time, he'd thought. So when he learnt there was no phone and that he'd had to wait for the supply boat, he hadn't really worried. That was before the first fever. After that his awareness shifted. He stopped counting time in days and measured it in the fever's cycles. On a clear moment, he remembered inserting his own IV line in the clinic. He'd been moved, he realized some time later. The village he'd been in at first didn't have a clinic.

He recalled the chills had already started by the time the nurse shook him awake. Her lips moved but the heavy feeling in his ears muted the sound of her voice, and he looked at her bewildered. She took the pad where he'd written down his info and held it up. There was quick picture of a boat, and she spoke while pointing at it, then pointing towards the door. A boat had come for him. He was finally getting out.

He had to shield his eyes from the sunlight as two young men carried the improvised stretcher outside. It was a brilliant day, as Chase had found was the norm in the rain forest once the morning showers wore off. But he couldn't enjoy it. His body groaned in pain with every step the men took, and the blinding light burned his eyes and made his head feel like it was about to explode. He felt every heartbeat pumping across his body, drumming in his ears and choking his throat. He grabbed at the edge of the stretcher to avoid sliding to the sides, but couldn't help being shaken from side to side whenever they hit any rough terrain. He couldn't really see where they where heading, or how much they still had to go. The sounds of the forest, the birds, the bugs, the voices, it was all drowned by the full feeling in his ears.

By the time he felt himself being slid off the stretcher, his entire body was shaking, feeling impossibly cold in the humid heat.

The nurse shook his shoulder again and pointed at the piece of paper, but his body shook so much he found it hard to focus, and he worried the disease had damaged his eyes as well as his ears. This is it, he thought, this is as far as I go. The parasite had now taken control of his blood cells, and it was only a matter of time until he lost consciousness. He struggled to breathe, though he couldn't really tell if it was because he was panicking or if his lungs were actually filling up with fluid. He felt hands turning him on his side, and a cold mist soaking his clothes. He managed to slow down his breathing gradually, but by then fog had taken over him. A sliver of light seeped through his half-closed eyes, but it hardly mattered. He let darkness take over, and his tense body turned limp.

 **Thanks so much for reading! I really appreciate it! Will probably update again by the end of this week, let me know what you think!**


	3. Chapter 3

Somebody knocked through the glass walls and House took his eyes away from the medical files in front of him. Foreman was standing right outside. A week had passed since he'd talked to him, and he was just getting used to having a team again, even if he was one man short. He'd tried contacting the agency that had hired Chase but most of the people he could reach spoke no English. One of the British doctors he talked to was already back home, and though he remained convinced that Chase would turn up once the rainy season was over and some towns were once again accesible, House was doubtful. He had insisted Foreman to reach out to his contacts, but the new Dean of Medicine had found many other responsibilities that were higher in his priority list. Wilson, who spoke some Spanish, had offered to help, but so far they had heard nothing from the Embassies in the capital city.

"Start him on broad spectrum antibiotics while you do the other tests" he said to his fellows by way of a dismissal. He waited until they were all gone before stepping into his office. Foreman followed.

"What is it?" he said. He knew if it was something unimportant Foreman would have just interrupted the differential. Foreman didn't speak immediately, and his annoyance turn to worry. He stared back, but he didn't like what he saw on Foreman's face. He knew what the Dean of Medicine wanted to talk about, and he knew he wouldn't like it. With every second that passed, negative scenarios were all he could imagine.

"Is he dead?" House asked pointedly. It was easier for him to say those words than wait for Foreman to find a more delicate way to do so. Foreman looked back at him with only mild surprise. When the Dean kept quiet, House had his answer.

Suddenly overwhelmed, he let himself fall to his seat with a thump and laid his head on his hands. A rush of emotion swept through him, but it wasn't grief. It was anger. He was mad at Foreman for keeping this from him in the beginning, from being so impassive about it all, for standing in front of him and delivering bad news like it was nothing, like it was just another patient who'd died and not a friend of eight years. But most of all he was angry at Chase. Angry at him for going away, for putting himself in that situation. He was angry at him for dying, as irrational as he knew that was.

"They..." Foreman started, struggling to articulate a response. He kept his gaze lowered, avoiding eye contact, guilt and pain plastered all over his face. House remembered that this was the second coworker he'd lost, that it had been him who found Kutner the day he'd killed himself, but couldn't bring himself to feel pity for him. "they just called me. They found him with some of their supplies down the river. A landslide carried him down."

"Fuck." House said, bringing his fist forcefully against the desk. "Damn it!"

He looked away towards the window, his mind bursting with expletives waiting to be said, but he didn't carry on. Instead, he tried to bring to his mind the last time he saw his oldest fellow. Almost a year had passed, and his memory was fuzzy. He could only vaguely remember him talking to their last patient, but he'd been too busy to actually pay attention.

After a long pause, Foreman spoke again.

"They need someone to bring him home." he said. House's head snapped in his direction.

"Is that why you're here, then? You want me to go get him?" he said, words spilling over like water from a pot that's been left boiling for too long.

"House, you know I can't leave-" Foreman said, but House cut him off before he could continue, and stood up from his chair.

"Of course you can't! Your job is more important than your friend's life! You arrogant, selfish, prick! Would you have even told me if you didn't need my help?" he bellowed, and Foreman's face scrunched up painfully.

"House, please…"

"Who knows about this?" he asked, knowing that he'd soon have to spread the bad news if Foreman hadn't already.

"No one yet. I was going to call Cameron after talking to you."

"Oh, you have fun with that conversation." House said, daringly, knowing how much that would hurt him, but Foreman took the jab and carried on.

"Can you talk to Taub? I'll tell Thirteen. I'm also trying to reach some of his contacts from abroad."

House nodded, his anger deflated somewhat.

"How did he die?" he asked.

"They didn't tell me. But he's-" Foreman hesitated "they said he probably died some weeks ago."

Immediately, images of horribly decomposing bodies flashed through House's mind, pushing bile to the back of his throat, but he managed to push them away. He didn't have time for those kind of thoughts.

"Of course he did." he said instead, voice full of spite. "That makes you feel better, doesn't it? Telling yourself that there was nothing you could have done."

Foreman remained silent for a while, and despite no change in his expression House knew his words had done some damage. But he couldn't stop himself. Pain had surged in his leg and his face kept flushing an angry red. He wasn't in a position to let himself care for Foreman's feelings.

"House…" Foreman repeated, and House noticed a broken quality to his voice. "Please."

House returned his stare. He knew what he wanted of him, and he knew what his answer would be the moment he'd mentioned it. He knew Chase had no immediate next of kin, and though he might have distant relatives and friends in Australia, it would be quite some time before they could get in contact with them. The only other person Chase was close to was a thousand miles away caring for another man's baby.

"Fine." he said. "I'll go."

House left without another word. There was plenty they hadn't discussed, but neither of them had it in them to talk about the details of what was happening. Instead, the gruesome reality remain unsaid. It was easier that way.

Though his immediate mission was to tell Taub, House found himself wandering off along the hallway. Taub was probably down by the patient's room, and there was no use interrupting them. He'd tell him when they came back and he could get to him alone.

Mindlessly, he ended up pushing Wilson's office open. They still weren't on the best terms, but he didn't care at this point. He had worked with Chase for almost a decade, he'd seen him go through marriage and divorce, and played a part in what made him the man he was. Him being dead would trump his friendship woes with Wilson.

"What is it, House?" Wilson said, looking up from his computer only for a moment. House sat at the couch in front of him and sighed. "House? I'm working here, I don't have time for chit chat"

"The ICRC just called Foreman." he started, knowing that would get his attention. He hesitated only slightly, knowing that this was not the right way to break the news, but then again that was always Wilson's ability, not his. Wilson looked up immediately, as he'd expected. "Chase is dead. They just found his body." He said it all in one breath, giving Wilson no time to interrupt him. Even as he spoke the words, he could hardly believe them. It all still seemed like a bad dream.

Wilson looked back, and his faced shifted through a parade of expressions. First surprise, then shock, and finally grief. The oncologist briefly considered the possibility that House was messing with him, but no. He didn't remember the last time he'd seen that look on his friend's face. Beneath a facade of anger, Wilson saw the beginnings of anguish.

"Oh my god" he said then, bringing his hand to his mouth. He repeated House's words in his mind over and over again. _Chase is dead. They just found his body._ He couldn't believe it. He felt that it had been just a couple of weeks since he'd been working side by side with him in a case of one of his cancer patients, shortly after House disappeared. When he'd mentioned he was taking a break, he thought _good for you_ , then went along his way. A couple of weeks after they'd learned of his disappearance, they all had to admit that the worst was a possibility, but nobody ever said it aloud. Wilson couldn't help but feel guilty at how easy it had been for him to forget Chase was missing.

"I'm traveling down there to get his body back." House added, breaking the long silence.

"What about Cameron?" Wilson asked "Does she know?"

"Foreman's probably telling her right now, but she just gave birth two weeks ago, it wouldn't be safe for her to go."

"I can't believe this. Chase…God…" Though they'd never been too close, Wilson counted Chase as one of his friends, even more after Cameron was gone. The thought of it was enough to make him nauseous.

.o.0.o.0.o.

Allison picked up the phone for what seemed like the tenth time that day. Between her responsibilities now that she'd decided to work from home and the few people still calling to leave their good wishes after the baptism, she had to say she was overwhelmed. She smiled when she spotted Foreman's number on the caller ID. She'd clearly been surprised when none of the Princeton doctors had reached out to her, but she reckoned they must working a difficult case. The same didn't hold true for her ex-husband. She had been relieved he hadn't called, as she didn't want to deal with the guilt she still felt.

"Hello Foreman" she said cheerfully "I was wondering when you'd call"

"Cameron." he said, pausing briefly. He hated to be the bearer of bad news during what should be a happy time. Specially when he was still struggling with the knowledge himself. He also knew she would blame him, and rightly so, but he was prepared to take that blow. "I've been meaning to call before but... I'm afraid I have bad news."

Cameron frowned and put down the bowl of food she was holding. Something in Foreman's voice made her heart race, though she couldn't possibly know why yet. A dramatic rush of possibilities ran through her mind, from the most harmless to the tragic. Is somebody sick? Is House back in prison? She let him continue.

"It's about Chase." he said. Cameron had figured it was about him, but when Foreman continued the news hit her like a ton of bricks. She had expected to hear about an accident, an illness, a string of bad decisions. But she was wrong. For a moment, she wished she'd never known. As Foreman explained she felt her knees buckling and the blood drain from her face. She felt suddenly lightheaded. _Oh my god,_ she thought, _not again, this can't happen to me again._ For a moment, she forgot she had ever left him.

"How?" she asked, voice trembling. She'd stopped what she was doing and held the phone to her face with both hands. Upstairs, she heard her baby start crying, but kept glued to the spot. Foreman's voice on the other line sounded mechanical, rehearsed, and she felt her blood boiling at his lack of emotion.

"We don't know exactly, they're not telling us much."

"How long have you known about this?" She asked.

"Not long, we got the call three days ago. House is down there right now." Foreman said, and explained the circumstances of his disappearance. She could tell this was old news to him, and it pained her he'd only called her because Chase had nobody else. If Chase had made a better job at keeping contact, she might have prevented all this from happening. Still, she deserved to know.

"Three days! And a month since you last heard of him! Why didn't I know this before? Why is it House there and not me?"

"Cameron, he took you out as an emergency contact. And I didn't want to worry with this before..."

"Because I was pregnant?"

"Well, yeah. I'm sorry, Cameron. I'm so so sorry."

"Being pregnant does not make me useless, Foreman." she said, well aware that her voice pitch betrayed a growing anxiety. Angry tears were already rolling off the side of her phone. "You waited until he was dead to call me? What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Cameron..." Foreman said. "There was nothing you could have done. There was nothing none of us could have done." At this, Allison lost her patience. Foreman was just telling her what he thought she wanted to hear, and she knew it. Why wasn't he more upset?

"That's bullshit, Foreman, you know it is. Somebody could have gone down there, but I guess you were too busy, right?"

She hung up the phone just as Foreman was about to reply, and leaned against the counter in her tiny kitchen. There was a mess of papers in front of her, things she had been working on before the call. Working quietly, she put everything away in neat folders, only sniffling occasionally. She cleaned the dishes and put the food away, all while screams echoed from the second floor. Only when everything was clean did she climb upstairs. Cradling her baby, she let herself sob.

.o.0.o.0.o.

House waited in his office for the fellows to return, but it was already dark outside by the time he could dismiss them. He'd allowed them to go home, announcing he wouldn't be in the next day. Foreman had already scheduled him on an overnight flight to Lima, though he wouldn't arrive at the small village where the ICRC kept Chase until two days later. Adams asked him if anything was wrong, and he worried he was being too obvious, but he just threw back a cutting remark and rubbed his leg. After that they left him alone. He called out Taub from his dark office just as he was pushing the door to leave.

"What's up?" he said, looking puzzled at the darkness that enveloped them. House leaned forwards on his chair and fiddled with his red and grey ball. If Taub didn't know him, he could have guessed he was nervous.

"I have some news" he said, wondering how on Earth Wilson got away with giving bad news so often. But then again, this was different. There wasn't a sickness to warn them about this possibility.

"It's not good" he added, well aware that he was dragging this on, but he was trying to avoid the shock he'd seen in Wilson when he told him."

"Okay…" Taub said, as if to hurry him along.

"It's about Chase." he said, and House felt Taub tense up, though he kept quiet. House thought Taub must have figured this was a possible scenario. He probably knew what was coming, so he continued. "Foreman got a call today, they've found his body."

The scenario repeated itself, the confusion, the anger, the grief. But where Wilson had been collected, Taub unraveled. When House couldn't answer all his questions, the doctor stormed out, agitated. He didn't linger on the doctor's pain, he was only glad that was over with. Only when no sound remained from the hallway did he sank back to his chair and let himself absorb the weight of the loss.

 **Thanks for reading!**


	4. Chapter 4

The first thing House noticed when he arrived at the river-side city was how unprepared he was for the weather. For the first hour, it poured so hard he thought the stilted Houses might collapse at the first breeze. When the rain finally stopped and the sun came out, he realized not even the blistering heat would be enough to dry his soaking clothes, not when the air outside made him feel like he was in a wet sauna, with fresh vapor carrying the ever present smell of clay.

He wasted no time and took a taxi to the general hospital, where the morgue was. He'd had the most important phrases memorized in Spanish, and luckily found the place after a short ride.

There was no air conditioning, and House quickly soaked the second set of clothes of the day during the hour he was kept in the waiting room. Around him, everybody kept quiet or communicated in hushed whispers. At least one of the women sitting opposite him was crying. Others just waved warm air into their faces with hand-held fans. He was at the beginning of what they'd told would be a long process, as taking home remains was a delicate issue.

Since he wasn't Chase's relative, he'd had to get all sort of legal documents signed proving that he had the right to take him back home, and those documents had had to be translated. In all, he'd already spent countless hours in paperwork, and it would only get harder. There was the issue of Chase's state, whether he'd written a will or not, and who would take care of the funeral arrangements. To facilitate the proceedings, House and Cameron, who he was now in touch with, had decided to have him cremated after he was cleared from the morgue to the funeral home. Considering how long he'd been dead and the likely state of his body, it was by far the smartest choice, and he frankly didn't care if that wasn't what Chase had wanted.

"Gregory House?" the doctor called finally, his voice heavily accented. He was joined by the ICRC delegate he'd spoken on the phone since landing, the one who'd called Foreman with the news. House rose to meet them, almost banging his head over the low door threshold, while the rather short doctor walked ahead without glancing back. The delegate handed him a black plastic bag, and from there he fished out a muddy leather wallet, the smell of humidity still clinging to it. Chase's driver's license was not water damaged and he stared at the weak smile in the thumb size photo, feeling the anger in his chest renewed. _You idiot,_ he thought, _outreach work? What the hell where you thinking?_

He was lead to one of the pathology rooms, and though it still didn't look like the morgue in Princeton, it was decidedly cleaner that the waiting rooms and kept at a welcoming chilly temperature. House barely had time to enjoy the respite from the heat before the delegate led him to a table on the far side of the room.

He raised his eyebrows and nodded, asking if he was ready. House nodded, feeling cold sweat on the back of his neck despite the near freezing temperatures. He clenched his fists and squared himself as the man lifted the plastic covering the body.

Immediately, House felt he was going to be sick. Half of his life as a doctor had not prepared him for what he had to see. His gaze was drawn to the large hole on Chase's chest and the sickly colour of his skin, and he looked away. He leaned backwards from the table to put his hands on his knees, unable to look again. He looked up towards the ceiling and took controlled breaths from his mouth, just in case there was any smell lingering in the air.

"What happened to him?" he asked the men in front of him, avoiding the table. His diagnostic mind could not fathom what could do that to a person. He wished the doctor had only uncovered the man's head.

"Cause of death was blunt trauma to the skull. Everything else happened afterwards. This is the jungle, you see?" the doctor said matter-of-factly, and House felt bile rise on the back of his throat. But on the back of his mind was another thought, and he had to look again. Holding his breath, he took a step forward, inspecting the body more closely. What before was barely a hunch was now all but confirmed. His heart started racing.

"It's not him" he said, waving his hand to motion the doctor to cover up the body. He'd seen enough.

"We found his wallet" the delegate said.

"You may have found his wallet, but that's not him" House said. He let himself feel a wave of relief, but it was short lived. It meant Chase was still missing.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure." he said, standing up and walking towards the exit. When the warm air enveloped him on the way out, he welcomed it.

House twiddled his fingers nervously as he waited for the operator to connect him for the international call. Though he carried good news, he knew the uncertainty could be even worse. He knew he would have rather get this over with that to have Chase never appear again. At least then they would have closure.

"House?" Foreman said at the end of the line "Is that you?"

"How many other calls are you expecting from South America?" he answered "Of course it's me."

"How did it go?" Foreman asked

"Are you with Wilson?" he asked. After a minute, and some shuffling, Foreman replied again.

"Yeah, he's with me. You're on speaker. How did it go? I talked with Cameron earlier and she said you'd agreed on the cremation-"

"Foreman, wait, Foreman, listen to me." he cut him off before he could go on a tangent. "Foreman, it wasn't him."

"What? What do you mean?"

"The dead guy is not Chase! He was found with Chase's wallet, and he's in bad shape so hard to recognise him from his photo. But it's not him, I'm positive."

"Oh my god.." he heard Wilson in the background.

"I've got to call Cameron."

"This just means he's still missing, Foreman. He could still be dead."

"Well, I'll take that over definitely dead anytime."

"Do you? What if he is never found? Believe me, things decompose here far more quickly than they do-"

"House" Wilson said in a warning tone. He could tell he was no longer on speaker. "Do you have to be that blunt?"

"Wilson I just traveled for 18 hours to this god forsaken place of a town. I'm tired and it's way too warm here, so excuse me if I'm not in my best mood.."

"This is Chase we're talking about here. He could be-"

"Well he's not, not that we know of, at least. I'll be back in a couple of days, the ICRC wants me to help out with one case."

"Are you taking up a case there? I thought..."

"Relax, Wilson, I'm just consulting. I'll be back on the morning flight on Friday."

"Ok. Take care."

Wilson looked at Foreman, who was sitting down on the ottoman in his office, his left hand supporting the weight of his head.

"What now?" he said.

"Back to where we were." Wilson answered.

.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

The next time he woke up Chase found himself in a bed. Right away he felt the foreign sensation of a respirator inside his throat and his eyes watered with the nausea and the sudden need to cough it out. His mouth and throat was painfully dry and the need to fight against the tube on his throat was overpowering, his gag reflex making him feel as though his body was seizing. Though rationally he knew the tube was breathing for him, he couldn't help but feeling like he was drowning. He tried raising his arms, but found he could barely move. His right arm was taped to a board, probably holding a catheter, and his eyes would only open halfway. He couldn't feel his legs at all.

Panicking, he felt his head rise and fall and bile accumulating at the back of his throat, only he couldn't get rid of it. Sensing his distress, somebody, an nurse he imagined, held his arm and pressed firmly. She was probably saying something but he couldn't hear, and his heart rate rocketed, thumping painfully at the sides of his head. He might have made it out of the forest, but at that moment, he felt like he was dying, like at any second his heart might just explode. The nurse grabbed his hand, squeezing it gently. He couldn't squeeze back but the warmness of her skin reassured him that he wasn't completely paralysed.

Slowly, he began to calm down, though he couldn't tell if it was of his own accord or if he'd received any medication. He blinked the tears obscuring his vision to focus around him, and the blur faded just enough to allow him to stare at a white ceiling covered in fluorescent lighting. He couldn't turn his head or see to his sides, but he felt more conscious that he had been for some time. He was in a hospital, but not one he recognised. It wasn't bright, and there were no windows that he could see. Above him, flying bugs drew endless circles around the exposed fluorescent.

As his heart rate slowed, he began the now familiar process of assessing his condition. He blinked. He was having a hard time focusing but he could see the bugs with surprising clarity. He tried wiggling his fingers and toes, but couldn't really tell if he had actually moved them, though he felt the weight of the rough blanket that covered him and the pressure of the catheter tied to his right hand. Not being able to move scared him, but it didn't really surprise him. He'd probably been drugged around the time they intubated him, so he wouldn't fidget and hurt himself.

He let the machine push air into his lungs for him while his mind wondered. _What day is it?_ he thought, but he could only guess. Four cycles meant between six and ten days could have passed since the first village, and that was if everything was normal. For all he knew, he could be just waking out of a coma. A month could have passed and he could be none the wiser. Just the fact that he had been intubated clued him in on bad his situation must have been like, or how bad it could be. He had no way of knowing whether he was finally improving or not, for a moment of clarity meant little when his lungs couldn't breathe on their own, when he still couldn't hear and when he could barely keep his eyes halfway open.

Out of the corner of his eyes, the nurse moved, but his vision tired and he couldn't follow her. He knew better than to try to scream through the respirator. _Why am I still alive?_ he wondered. _Why hasn't anybody come for me?_ He realised that besides the paper he'd scribbled on what seemed like a lifetime before, there was nothing in him confirming his identity. Whatever possession he hadn't lost when the flood took over their camp, the miners had stripped from him the moment he stumbled over their operation. He remembered his relief at finding a group of people after being lost for two days, with barely any food. But it was short lived, as with a swing of a machete and a rifle pointed at his chest the men had made it clear they would have no part in helping him. He'd somehow managed to stumble into an illegal operation, and they wanted no foreigner either near their camp or running his mouth about it to anybody else.

The men had taken everything he had, including his shoes, and kept him tied down for what had seemed an eternity. But the jungle is not an ideal place to keep prisoners. With a short head start, he was able to get away, running into the forest. He didn't go far, knowing they wouldn't go after him, and afraid the dark green of the canopy would swallow him whole. After night fell, he took one of their boats.

When he first started feeling sick, he wasn't surprised. His feet and legs were cut and bruised, and had been exposed to all sorts of critters, with no previous illnesses to give him immunity. Without a map, and fearing he would never get back to the city, he'd stopped at the first village he'd found. He didn't have a watch to keep time, but the predawn fog was already thick by the time he had dragged himself into the muddy beach. The first fever was only just starting.

 **Thanks for reading! I kinda put two chapters here cause they were kinda short, so we're just past halfway point around here. Let me know what you think!**


	5. Chapter 5

The city hospital, rundown as it was, now seemed like a state of the art facility compared to the drywall units on the town clinic he had been dragged to. Even though the equipment looked in good shape and the medicine room was well stocked, each room held far more people than it was supposed to. Patients in stretchers and wheelchair lined the hallway, and the only doctor gave each of them but a cursory glance before moving over to the next case. Many family members sat on the floor in the overcrowded waiting room.

"Is it always like this?" House asked, pausing to stare at a small child that held a swollen hand close to his chest.

"Not always. But there's been a lot of flooding recently. The rain always brings trouble this time of the year." The delegate answered. House gathered from his tone that such disasters were common occurrences. He was lead towards a room separated from the hallway by a door made out of plastic strings, where at least half a dozen beds stood side by side, all of them filled, with any empty space occupied by equipment or family members. The floor was covered in tile, but it looked like it hadn't been disinfected in some time.

"Can't you get more help?" he asked, struggling to walk between the hospital beds. Sounds from mechanical respirators and dialysis machines drowned the quiet conversation. It seemed most, if not all, the patients in the room where either asleep or unconscious.

"Money is not really the problem right now, we received funding last year. The problem is getting qualified people. Nobody wants to come work here, and we can't really afford to overpay them." the delegate said. He had mentioned his name more than once but House just didn't even try to pronounce, and didn't feel like asking again, so he'd decided to just call him Juan. He led him to a far corner, where a woman lay. Her skin was a startling yellow.

He let himself fall into diagnostic mode, probing the doctor for test results and previous history. He recalled his first days as an infectious disease physician, and how he sometimes lamented that they didn't get any interesting tropical diseases back in Princeton. Places like this just had so much more variety.

He bantered back and forth with the local physician, with Juan serving as a translator, and performed a physical exam. The woman was awake so he could ask her questions, but her answers were vague. Spanish was not her native language, so even Juan struggled to understand her. However, he could be sure of one thing: the woman was not suffering from any infectious disease. She had cancer. What a bore.

Days later, House would think about the chances of him ending up in that clinic. How that woman's cancer had set in motion a series of events that ended up with him there. And how he'd almost missed it.

He was already on his way out when he spotted the shirt. It was hanging outside along various other pieces of clothing, but it caught his eye. He'd seen it before, but wasn't sure where. He pushed the mesh that separated the unit from the small courtyard turned laundry room, and grabbed it.

"Who does this belong to?" he asked, holding the thin, brown-stained fabric. It looked just like shirts he'd seen the foreign volunteers wearing in the photos that lined the ICRC offices.

"One of the patients, probably." Juan said, looking at him strangely, still from inside the building.

"Who?" he said, but Juan just shrugged. He went back inside, and began systematically searching every room. Nurses called out to him in Spanish, but he kept moving forward. When no faces looked familiar, he moved over to a different room.

"Who does this belong to?" he asked the doctor forcefully, towering over him menacingly, even though he knew he couldn't understand what he was saying, so he shook the shirt in front of him. He was about to shake him again when one of the nurses grabbed his shoulder and pointed to the end of the hallway.

House followed her, heart thumping at his chest, worrying he might have gotten there too late. They passed room after room until they got to the end of the corridor. Inside his mind was churning. _Let it be him. Let this all be over._ When they finally stopped, House had a brief moment of panic. He suddenly found himself staring at an empty bed.

"Where is he?" he asked, but couldn't understand the nurse's reply. He fumbled though his things to produce the driver's license that had Chase's photo on it. "Was it him?" he said, pointing at the small picture. The nurse kept talking, so House took her hand and led her towards the delegate, who was waiting outside with the doctor.

"Ask her if she's seen this man" he told him, holding the picture. Juan translated for him.

"She says he was here, but they took him away."

"Took him away where?" he asked, but the woman shook his head. Not a good sign.

"She doesn't know" he said, but when the woman kept speaking he hesitated.

"What is she saying?" House said, growing agitated. "What did she say?"

"She said he was dying, so they took him away?" Juan said, clearly uncomfortable. House was almost two feet taller than he was, and was clearly feeling intimidated when he took a defiant step in his direction.

"Who's _they?"_ he asked, really hoping 'they' wasn't just a messed up way to tell him he had died "Who took him away? When did she last see him?"

"Two days ago, she doesn't know."

House breathed out heavily, then turned to the doctor.

"Where could 'they' have taken him? This man, the man who was in that bed?" he asked, pointing first to the ID and then in the direction of the bed. The doctor exchanged some words with Juan before he translated his answer.

"Sometimes they take them by boat to Nauta." he said. "It's about four hours from here."

"Does he remember this man?" House asked.

"Yes, he says he was in a coma. They couldn't help him here."

"Why didn't you tell me that?" he asked, loud enough that everyone close to them turned their heads to look.

"I.. I didn't know he was here! I'm just learning about all this."

"Didn't you know Dr. Chase?"

"I never met him. Everyone in his team already left."

House banged his hand against the this drywall, making the entire wall tremble.

"I need to get to Nauta."

House learned from the doctor that Chase had been brought in around a week earlier by a medic in a very remote village. By the time he arrived at the clinic he had already been unconscious and fell into a coma shortly after. He had no identification on him, and besides the shirt the clothes he wore had been lent to him by other people. The medic had told him he had malaria, and it had gone to his brain. He'd been receiving quinine but it appeared it was no longer helping. But quinine was also the only antimalarial available in the clinic, so they shipped him out on a boat after they got him in mechanical ventilation.

Two days had passed since then, and House knew enough of malaria to know it could kill faster than that.

The sea-foam green walls of the Nauta city hospital where anything but welcoming. A single ambulance was parked in front and a large cue of people stretched out from the tiny reception area into the muddy street outside. House could have had somebody from the consulate with him, but they would take at least a day to arrive, and time was of the essence. Instead, he had paid a local tour guide to serve as his translator for the rest of his search. After a long boat ride and a quick bite of food his leg ached furiously and his cane proved useless whenever there was any mud, which was frequently.

"Excuse me, sir? You can't be over here." a security guard called over him as he tried to approach one of the patient wards.

"Tell him I'm a doctor here, tell him I'm with the Red Cross" he told his interpreter, who obliged. After a quick exchange, the guard left them alone.

He pushed through doors and took a look at every patient in the wards, but there was no sign of Chase. He intercepted more than one nurse, showing them the photo on his driver's license, but no one seem to have seen him.

"Tell him he must have been brought in two days ago. He hasn't seen him?" he asked yet another doctor, but again came the head shaking and the shoulder shrugging. By nightfall, House was beginning to believe Chase had either died on the way there or just taken somewhere else. He hated the uncertainty, and he hated how his hopes kept rising only to come crashing back down.

Night didn't bring any comfort. The humid heat was as strong as always and every place with a source of light was swarming with bugs, some of them bigger that his fist. He'd already missed his flight back home and had no way to let Foreman know about it, but he realised that wasn't the worst of his problems. If he had only been retrieving a body, he would at least have known more than what he did at the moment.

He left the inner hallway of the hospital and walked towards a small inner courtyard, where a light breeze made the air just a little less humid. He took a seat in a bench next to an older man who held an IV by his side, and wished he had something to drink.

"Nice day, huh?" he said in his broken Spanish, but the man beside him just grunted. "Yeah, I know." he added in English "I was just kidding, it's damn hot in here."

House wiped at his forehead and stared at the parade of doctors and nursed walking around the rooms that lined the courtyard. It occurred to him that the building looked like it had been some sort of mansion before it was turned into a hospital, and nurses seemed to have particular trouble getting the rolling hospital beds to turn at the narrow corners. He kept his gaze on one of them. The nurse was pushing the tall bed by herself, with another girl too young to be long out of high school manually pumping air into the patient. One of the wheels had been caught up in a small crack in the concrete floor. House stood up, not because he wanted to help but something about the scene caught his attention. Just as he was about to reach them, the wheel got unstuck and the nurse continued pushing the bed away.

House was about to return to his place at the bench, but it began to pour, like apparently it always did around that time. He carried on in the direction of the exit when he spotted something. The hallway was dim and besides some old fluorescents the night sky provided little coverage, but the nurse had just tackled another corner and the patient's bed was in full view. Reflected on the windows on the other end, House spotted pale skin and light hair.

He quickened the pace. His leg screamed in agony but he knew the window of time was short. He was about to pull up beside the bed when it took a turn into one of the wards, and someone reached out to stop him.

"You can't come in here, this is the ICU" the man said, but House couldn't not understand. He tried to push his way in but he faced resistance.

"That man!" he said, agitated, not bothering to speak Spanish, "Who is he?"

The doctor in front of him answered, but though he looked around his interpreter was no where to be seen.

"Let me in, I'm a doctor" he said again, and this time he pushed inside, finding himself in what appeared to be an intensive care unit. He walked as fast as he could, feeling the attending doctor grabbing him by his arm, though with not enough force to make him stop.

A handful of people surrounded the bed he was looking for, preventing him from identifying the patient, for a moment, he feared it would be family members and he was just having visions and wishful thinking. But they were doctors, and they were performing an intubation. He heard angry shouts directed at him, but took one step closer nonetheless. He saw feet peaking out of the hospital sheets and suddenly remembered the man in the morgue. But this man wasn't dead. He pushed one of the nurses away until he was right next to the bed. Only then did he allow himself to breathe. The man in the bed was Chase.

 **Thanks for reading and sorry for the delay! Only a couple chapters left now, let me know what you think!**


	6. Chapter 6

HhTo say the young doctor looked different was an understatement. He had a shabby beard of at least a week covering an ash grey face. Even under the blanket, he could tell he had lost a lot of weight. Dark grey bags hung below his closed eyes, while the rest of his face was obscured by the respirator. Though unconscious and not breathing by himself, his vitals looked stable, his heart-rate only slightly elevated.

"You idiots!" he said when the doctor addressed him. "How long has he been here?"

"I'm sorry, who are you?" the doctor began. His hand fidgeted restlessly. He was nervous.

"I'm Dr. House and this is Robert Chase. We work for the Red Cross. I came here looking for him. I have to bring him home." House said without missing a beat, producing the documents he was told he would need and the waterlogged driver's license from his pocket. Though he tried to maintain a calm face, inside his hear beat like crazy. A part of him wondered if he hadn't just imagined the entire past day.

"What's wrong with him?" he asked the doctor "Can we move him?" Though the small room had become crowded, Chase didn't stir.

"He's got malaria." the doctor said. "He's in a coma"

"What are you giving him?" he asked, but before they could answer he spotted a chart at the bedside and began leafing through it.

"We need to get him to another hospital. This is in his brain. He needs better treatment." he said.

"He can't be moved" the doctor said. "Not without the respirator."

"I'll pump him manually if I have to. If he doesn't get proper care, he'll die."

House had to say the situation was difficult. If it wasn't for the bundle of cash he carried, he could have never been able to get the help he needed to get Chase out of that hospital. It took the entire day to get him into a high speed boat and into the city, all the while House crouched painfully beside him and pumped air into his weak lungs. Once in a while, Chase's eyes would open halfway and his chest would rise and fall on its own, but he could never get him to respond.

It took a massive amount of phone calls to get a plane ready to get him to the city, where he would get care until he was ready to return. In the rush of things, House had missed his plane back home and also failed to check in with Princeton. He knew however angry they probably were at his disappearance they would soon forget it once he brought in the good news.

That is, if there were any.

Chase had encephalitis, an uncommon complication of malaria. None of the doctors who had taken care of him had been able to communicate with him in the brief moments he'd shown awareness. It had been two days since he had begun a new course of treatment but they still didn't want to take him off the respirator. During the time he'd been with him, he'd already seized twice and gone into respiratory arrest once.

House knew his treatment had consisted in high doses of quinine, a widely available anti-malarial drug, but that probably had not been enough to prevent complications. Now, in a squeaky clean hospital room, all he could do was wait until the new drugs started to kick in. A new cocktail of antibacterials and antimalarials was now running through his veins. Though the muddy clothes were long gone, House couldn't help but remember the mangled body with the big hole in his chest every time he looked at him. He shuddered thinking that could have easily been him.

Four days after his last call home, he grabbed the phone again.

He was on hold for only a moment.

"Hello?" the voice said at the other end of the line. House was not surprised when it was sleepy. It was still a couple of hours until dawn.

"Wilson, it's me." he said. He'd decided against calling Foreman or Cameron first, not just because he knew they would give him a hard time for not checking in before, but because he wanted Wilson to be the one spreading the message.

"House? Oh my God, House, are you alright? Why didn't you call?" Wilson said, relief flooding his voice. Hose didn't bother to explain, and went straight to the point.

"I found him, Wilson. He's alive. He's in really bad shape but he's alive."

Wilson was shocked into silence for a moment.

"Wait, what? God, that's great, House. How is he? How did you find him? Does anybody else know?"

"Not yet, I was hoping you could tell them. I still don't know what happened, I haven't been able to speak to him. He's got cerebral malaria, he's been in a coma for the last five days at least. He was around 7 in Glasgow this morning. He also had a couple seizures."

"Where are you?"

"I'm at the capital. He's getting good care and seems stable so we'll just have to wait."

"Ok." Wilson said. He didn't know whether to feel happy or not. "I'll call the others."

"Thanks. I'll call tomorrow." House said, and hung up the phone. Just as he did, Chase started choking by his side, and the shrill tone of an emergency code filled the room.

—.o.o.o.

Chase felt the cycle repeat itself, only this time he couldn't calm down. He wanted to breathe but the intubation tube rubbed on his throat like sandpaper. His pulse quickened, and no cough appeared to dislodge the foreign sensation in his throat. His entire body felt like he was being burned alive, and once again he felt nausea take over his senses. The muscles in his abdomen contracted with the effort, and though he tried blinking the tears in his eyes away his vision wouldn't focus on anything in particular.

An immense pressure started building up in his chest, and his ears rang. He knew he would pass out soon if he didn't get any air, but he couldn't think clearly enough to relax. He felt he was about to be sick when something pressed against his throat. He coughed, then coughed again, then suddenly the foreign sensation was gone, followed by a pain that ripped apart his throat. He gasped, trying to take in air, but it didn't seem to be enough. He felt his chest wheezing and his back arching backwards, muscles tensing up, trying to get some oxygen.

A mask was pulled over his mouth, finally bringing some relief, and he felt his chest's rapid rise and fall start to slow down. He realized he felt a tingling in his fingers, and when he attempted to move them, they did. Still agitated, he tried to focus his eyes on the ceiling.

The bugs were gone, he noticed, and faint light seeped from a window on the right that he couldn't see clearly. The room was bright, with cool, even lighting. He blinked again, then just as his eyes adjusted another one light was shone straight to his right eye. He flinched, then let his eyes open again. He had to blink several times before he could actually see more than just a blur. He was about to try to turn his head to the side when an unmistakable face leaned in front of him. _House,_ he thought, and then _I'm going to be alright._ For the first time in what felt like months, he let himself believe he was going to be alright.

-0-0-0-0-

 **Really sorry about this huge delay! I'm glad some of you are enjoying this story. Wrapping up already, only one chapter left**.


	7. Chapter 7

House stayed with him, in silence, for about an hour, even after his eyes had shut in exhaustion and his grip on his hand had weakened. Then, despite his protests, he was led outside to a waiting room, as visits to the ICU were limited and House was not allowed to practice medicine, as Chase's doctor's kept reminding him. Unlike Princeton-Plainsboro, this hospital's walls were not made of glass, and House couldn't see what was going on inside.

"Dr. House?" a young doctor dressed in scrubs approached him. He nodded, and he introduced himself as one of Chase's physicians.

"When are you getting him to a room?" House asked, glad that so far all the medical team spoke excellent English.

"It's early to know yet, but he'll have to stay here for at least five more days before we can consider moving him." He said. House nodded. "We just got his last scans and tests done, and he's responding to treatment. His lung function has improved and his blood smears are getting clearer."

House already knew all this, but he humoured the doctor and nodded.

"He can't hear" he said, stating his suspicion as a fact. He was slightly surprised when the doctor nodded.

"Yes, but we're not quite sure why yet. It could be the either the quinine treatment or a result of the encephalitis. Either way, it's possible it's temporary."

"What else?" House asked. Apart from the initial check when they'd boarded the plane, he wasn't as well informed on Chase's condition as he'd wanted to. The fact that the doctors there kept his file away from him didn't help.

"He's just woken from a coma, so his recovery should follow a pattern, if everything goes well. It's likely he won't speak, and when he does, he'll be confused. He might not remembered what happened so don't ask him too many questions." the doctor explained, and House had to bite his tongue to avoid telling him to cut through the chase. He did not need to be lectured on recovery from coma.

"His motor skills appear unimpaired, but he will be weak and still need physical therapy. It doesn't seem as though his previous doctors made any attempt to maintain his muscles active. It may take a while until he can walk normally. He had two broken ribs which are now healing, and he also tested positive for yellow fever, but luckily he was just at the beginning stages, so we've already began treatment for that."

"What about bringing him home?"

"Not for at least a couple of weeks. We need to make sure everything is out of his system, or he could relapse."

House nodded, and the doctor left. Only a minute had passed before his phone rang.

"House?" the voice said on the other end of the line "How is he?"

"Hey Cameron." he said "He woke up a couple of hours ago. It's going to be a long road but he'll be okay. You can give Foreman and Wilson the news."

Cameron sobbed in relief, then added "Is he awake? Did you talk to him? Can I talk to him"

House paused. He had hope he didn't have to explain the details of his condition. "Cameron, he just woke up. He's barely awake. His hearing might have been damaged, so he can't really hear at the moment. His doctor says he probably won't talk anytime soon."

"Oh" she said. "Oh god. Okay. House? Do you think I should go?" House knew she'd bring that up sooner or later. He hesitated, but knew in the end this wasn't enough to bring them together again, and it would only bring needless pain.

"No." he answered "Maybe when I get him back. There's no need for you to be here."

Chase spent the rest of the day alternating between nervous anxiety and an exhaustion so extreme he felt he could not keep himself awake. People would come and go, and sometimes he would spot House sitting by his side, but most of the time he was alone.

He'd guess a couple of days had passed until he began to drink water from a straw the nurse handed to him. Once he'd tried to reach for the glass but had completely missed the mark. His hands moved as if through water, slowly and erratically. He tried to speak, but it was as though words had been erased from his mind. A doctor handed him a dry erase board, but he couldn't hold the pen straight for long enough to write. He wasn't aware of his surroundings the entire time, and sometimes he dreamt he was back in a hammock in the middle of the forest. One time, the dream was so vivid he was convinced he was real, and when he woke up to find House by his side he just burst into tears, with loud sobs escaping his throat without his control. He didn't even know why.

He lost track of time easily. An hour might go by in a second but a minute could drag on forever. He couldn't tell night from day, and for brief moments he began to wonder if he had actually died, and was trapped in some sort of in-between. Sometimes he could follow the nurse as she walked around the nurse and sometimes he just felt his body being moved around the bed like he was just laundry being folded.

Slowly, his awareness increased. He still couldn't hear when House or his doctor spoke, but he could hear the sound of the door when a breeze shut it closed and a faint beep coming from one of the machines he was still connected to. He began to sit up in the bed and drink water without choking. He could hold a pen and write, though no more than a couple of words at a time with terrible handwriting. The doctors and House kept asking questions, and slowly, he began helping them put his story together. When they had first handed him a paper, he'd written his name and the number for the Red Cross office.

House began writing to him in the small whiteboard, trying to explain what had happened, but he found he often forgot. A couple of times he refused to take the pen when House tried to get him to write. He didn't ask any questions, but still eyed the papers his doctors left behind, though he had to struggle to get any meaning out. Ten days after he had been admitted, he stood up with the help of a nurse. Immediately, he swayed to the side, grabbing at the bed's metal rail. He took a tentative step, feeling as though he'd just downed five shots of tequila, but this time he remained upright. When the nurse clapped, he heard her.

000000

Chase still hadn't said a word by the time he boarded a plane back to Princeton. He still needed to take medicine every couple of hours and he still couldn't walk on his own without some aid, but he'd continue his rehabilitation back home. House rode the airport golf cart with him, then let him be wheeled into the plane while he refused help.

House couldn't be more glad to leave the country, after a five day trip had stretched for more than three weeks. Though he'd been living in a hotel close to the hospital, he still felt exhausted. He'd receive calls from either Wilson or Foreman every day. Cameron had stopped calling, but he knew from Wilson that she still asked for updates. A part of him felt sorry for Chase, having been in a coma himself and knowing how hard it was. But another part was going increasingly frustrated. Chase wouldn't talk, despite him begging to. House was starting to suspect Chase could, but just didn't want to. He still couldn't be sure if he'd suffered any neurological damage, or any other traumatic experience that would cause him to retreat. Though he saw him crying more than once, he could never get him to open up about it.

He couldn't use the hearing loss as an excuse either. He'd been wheeled to an audiologist, who'd diagnosed him with bilateral severe hearing loss in both ears and fitted him with a temporary aid, which in theory allowed him to understand speech. He was still only able to interrogate him using a dry erase board and yes or no questions, but he'd gotten a limited version of the story.

He had pressed him about it more than once, going as far as losing his patience and yelling at him for making him lose a month out of his life to take care of his sorry ass, shouting that if he had died he would have gotten over all of this much faster. Chase had stared back at him blankly, as if he hadn't understood a word he'd said, and refused to do any other exercise for the rest of the day.

The neurologist had asked him to be patient, but he had never considered himself a patient man. He didn't owe Chase anything. He wasn't family or a very close friend. He wondered if the doctor would have done the same thing for him if it was him who'd disappeared. But it was different. House had Wilson, he still had his mother, even. Who did Chase have?

The thrill and the relief he'd experienced when he'd realised he had found Chase alive now seemed like a distant memory. Sometimes he wished he'd never come for him, but guilt soon took over. If it hadn't been him, Chase would probably be dead by now.

Once they were both in the plane, on tickets paid for by Chase's insurance, House handed Chase a handful of pills and a bottle of water. He took them with shaking hands, proceeding slowly so he wouldn't drop any. House had seen the process many times already. Slowly, he held the bottle with both hands up to his mouth, but still a trickle escaped and dripped down his chin, which he dried with his elbow. Carefully, he twisted the cap back into the bottle and returned it to House.

"Nice job" House said.

"Thanks" Chase answered.

It took him a second, but as soon as he realised he looked back at Chase, shocked. It had been a hoarse whisper, but he'd heard it. Chase stared back at him, his eyes fixed, no longer struggling to keep focus.

"You can hear me" House said. Chase kept quiet, but nodded slowly. "You can speak?" Chase stayed quiet, then slowly, like a kid struggling with a stammer, opened his mouth.

"Y-yes" he said, slurring only slightly.

House talked to him for what felt the rest of the trip, asking him a million questions. He knew the general story from his dry-board interrogation, but all he had was the words he had written. They weren't Chase's.

"There was a…" he started, then seemed at a loss for words "There was a…" he tried again, then winced with frustration.

"A what? a storm? a landslide? a fire? a flood?"

"A flood" he said.

"Well, I knew that, but what happened then?" House said, aware that he sounded impatient.

"Then…" Chase started again, giving another frustrated huff. He looked at House, hoping he would have the words he was missing. They all seemed to be stuck on the tip of his tongue, and actually producing the sounds felt harder than ever, like speaking through glass marbles.

"Then I got...lost. There was this place... I can't..." Chase shook his head, more to himself than anything else, and he felt his throat tighten. He'd never had any trouble speaking or remembering things, but now he drew a blank. He had tried for the first week in the hospital, but the frustration had had him halt any progress.

"When I spoke to you at the hospital, where you listening?" House said. He had spent a couple of hours giving Chase a thorough recap of his South American experience a couple of days before, and Chase had sat through it without as much as a glance in his direction.

Chase shook his head. He remembered it, if only watching house move his lips out of the corner of his eyes. It was before the hearing aids, and he couldn't hear a thing. He touched his right ear, and House seemed to understand.

"Well, then why did you not speak before? You're deaf not mute." House said. Chase felt blood rushing to his head, an unexplained anger swelling in his chest. He let out a breath, trying to calm down, but his mind found it impossible to put his feelings into words.

"I get that it was hard." House said, noticing the change in his mood. "That it _is_ hard. But you didn't even try."

Chase felt himself flinch at those words. He _was_ trying, wasn't he? House was probably the only reason he was still alive, but here he was, not even able to say thank you.

"Can't you speak? Or you just didn't want to?" House pressed again, unwilling to drop the subject. It was obvious to Chase that his boss still carried spite in his voice. Thoughts swirled in his head. He wanted to say he was hurting. He wanted to tell House that his head felt like it had been cut open into little pieces and then jumbled up. He wanted tell him how his thoughts mixed in with his memories, making him feel like he was never really awake. How keeping quiet made it easier not to scream.

But the words he needed weren't there.

Foreman waited with Taub and Thirteen at the airport, and the three of them lunged at them when they finally left the arrivals gate. Chase had fallen asleep halfway through the flight but was now awake again, and he greeted the group with a smile. It was the first House had seen him make, and he'd be lying if he said that didn't bother him. Chase looked normal, if only much thinner, so when the group began asking questions and Chase didn't answer it was hard to hide their disappointment, even with House's previous warming.

"I'm so happy you're here" Foreman said enthusiastically, while Thirteen enveloped him in a hug. House noticed that after the initial greeting his eyes began to drift into space, as they had so often done in the hospital, and his expression turned blank. He still had a long way to go.

Epilogue

Chase finished buttoning up his shirt and looked at his handiwork in the mirror. Five months had passed since getting back to the US, and though he still hadn't gotten his speed back, buttoning his shirt was already far from a challenge. He picked up his messenger bag and headed outside.

Even after returning, he'd felt at a loss as to what he was supposed to do next. For weeks he believed he could never go back to practicing medicine, not when he couldn't even remember the names of his coworkers let alone list symptoms for diseases.

Slowly, but surely, things started to come back. He had to stay in the hospital for a month after his arrival, learning how to speak and take care of himself again, then another two months as a day patient in a rehabilitation centre. It was painful, humiliating and frustrating, but it was finally over. He remembered when Cameron had come to visit, and he felt so ashamed he'd ignored her. He remembered turning his back to her and walking towards the bed, only to stumble and fall down to the floor. When she'd tried to help him up, he remember feeling like he was being torn apart at the seams, and he apologised to her between sobs. She sat on the floor with him for at least an hour, and he was still thankful for that.

Controlling his emotions had been one of the hardest parts. At first, it seemed as though he would get sad or angry over the smallest things, but the rehabilitation centre had been a good help. Once he was able to walk they pushed him to exercise, as being bedridden had robbed him of a lot of his previous muscle tone. He'd already swam his recommended laps at the pool that morning, a habit that had stuck to him long after he was released.

He pushed a pair of black hearing aids into his ears just before he left the apartment. Some of his hearing had come back, but progress there was the slowest and he was beginning to accept he would need the aids for the rest of his life. It was the price he had to pay for the drug that had kept him alive.

"Welcome back, Dr. Chase" Foreman greeted him just outside the elevator.

"Thanks" he said. They had agreed he would take it easy for the time being. He still had to pass a couple of tests before Foreman allowed him to actually do procedures, but participating in the differential was something he could do.

"Good morning" he said, pushing the glass doors open.

"Ah, the prodigal son returns" said House by way of a greeting, embracing him in a slightly awkward hug. Looking over the patient's file, he felt like he was finally coming home. House gave him a knowing glance before starting the banter, then dismissed them for some tests.

"Just one thing, House." he said while the rest of the fellows went on their tasks. House looked up from the book he'd started. "I never said thank you, for all that you did for me."

"Well, it's about time, you ungrateful bastard…" House started, keeping his voice comical.

"I know" he interrupted. "I'm sorry I was such a pain."

"That you were."

"Thank you." he repeated. House nodded. Chase smiled. A nod was probably as much as he was going to get.

The end.

 **That's it! Thank you all for reading!**


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